• Early Stage Entrepreneurship
  • State Report

2020 State Report on Early-Stage Entrepreneurship in the United States

This report presents state trends in early-stage entrepreneurship in the United States, including all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Published: March 2021

Authors: Robert Fairlie and Sameeksha Desai

Suggested citation: Fairlie, Robert and Sameeksha Desai (2021) State Report on Early-Stage Entrepreneurship in the United States: 2020, Kauffman Indicators of Entrepreneurship, Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation: Kansas City.

This is a report published by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation utilizing content and data from multiple sources and external contributors. Every effort has been made to verify the accuracy of the information contained in this report, and it is believed to be correct as of the publication date. Nonetheless, this material is for informational purposes, and you are solely responsible for validating the applicability and accuracy of the information in any use you make of it.

The Kauffman Indicators of Early-Stage Entrepreneurship is a set of measures that represents new business creation in the United States, integrating several high-quality, timely sources of information on early-stage entrepreneurship.

This report presents four indicators tracking early-stage entrepreneurship for the years 1996–2020: rate of new entrepreneurs reflects the number of new entrepreneurs in a given month, opportunity share of new entrepreneurs is the percentage of new entrepreneurs who created their businesses out of opportunity instead of necessity, startup early job creation is the total number of jobs created by startups per capita, and startup early survival rate is the one-year average survival rate for new firms. State level trends are reported for all four indicators.

  • The rate of new entrepreneurs in 2020 ranged from a low of 0.16 percent in Rhode Island to a high of 0.53 percent in Florida. The median for states in 2020 was 0.31 percent, reflecting 310 out of every 100,000 adults.
  • The opportunity share of new entrepreneurs ranged from a low of 66.0 percent in Massachusetts to 95.1 percent in North Dakota, with a median of 81.4 percent.
  • Startup early survival rate ranged from 63.4 percent in Washington to 81.8 percent in California, with a median of 77.9 percent.
  • The overall KESE Index – an equally-weighted composite of the four indicators – ranged from -7.8 in Washington to 5.2 in Florida, with a median of -0.1.
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